Recognition of distinct HLA-DQA1 promoter elements by a single nuclear factor containing Jun and Fos or antigenically related proteins.

The activity of MHC class II promoters depends upon conserved regulatory signals one of which, the extended X-box, contains in its X2 subregion a sequence related to the cAMP response element, CRE and to the TPA response element, TRE. Accordingly, X2 is recognized by the AP-1 factor and by other c-Jun or c-Fos containing heterodimers. We report that the X-box dependent promoter activity of the HLA-DQA1 gene is down-modulated by an array of DNA elements each of which represented twice either in an invertedly or directly repeated orientation. In this frame, we describe a nuclear binding factor, namely DBF, promiscuously interacting with two of these additional signals, delta and sigma, and with a portion of the X-box, namely the X-core, devoid of X2. The presence of a single factor recognizing divergent DNA sequences was indicated by the finding that these activities were co-eluted from a heparin-Sepharose column and from DNA affinity columns carrying different DNA binding sites as ligands. Competition experiments made with oligonucleotides representing wild type and mutant DNA elements showed that each DNA element specifically inhibited the binding of the others, supporting the contention that DBF is involved in recognition of different targets. Furthermore, we found that DBF also exhibits CRE/TRE binding activity and that this activity can be competed out by addition of an excess of sigma, delta and X-core oligonucleotides. Anti-Jun peptide and anti-Fos peptide antibodies blocked not only the binding activity of DBF, but also its X-core and sigma binding; this blockade was removed by the addition of the Jun or Fos peptides against which the antibodies had been raised. In vitro synthesized Jun/Fos was able to bind to all these boxes, albeit with seemingly different affinities. The cooperativity of DBF interactions may explain the modulation of the X-box dependent promoter activity mediated by the accessory DNA elements described here.